The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming

The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming

I published my book, The New Experience of the Supersensible, subtitled: The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, in 1995, and it met with almost no reception. It was totally ignored and ‘Totgeschwiegen’. The end of the century was, in this regard, a bleak time (I described it also in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity), because I knew that this path in the only way that leads to the resurrection of anthroposophy in the 21^st century. But in recent years, the number of people has grown, slowly, yet steadily, who dare to open their hearts and minds to grasp its meaning. This has led me to the decision, to prepare an enlarged second edition, that will incorporate the research I have been doing in this field in the last 30 years. In the passage posted below, taken from the introduction, the essence of the knowledge drama is described in this way:

‘The given appearances of Anthroposophy and the Etheric Christ are transformed by means of the crossing and the mutual penetration of the two appearances by means of the growing knowledge of the essence of the other. The goal is to achieve a systematically increased intensification and acceleration of the rhythmic sway between the poles of their given appearances, so that an active and cognitive spiritual heart organ is formed through their mutually reversed breathing movement. In this dynamically cognizing heart organ, their enhanced life in each other reveals, through its inner conscious pulsation, the secret of their being and becoming in man: the living Christ in and through the Being of Anthroposophia, and the living Being of Anthroposophia in and through the Christ’. This activity that connects the etheric appearance of the Christ and spiritual science, is the nucleus, around which the entire knowledge drama of the Second Coming is formed, and the bridge of spiritual memory and continuation of consciousness is constructed.

From the Introduction: I- Methodological Approach

The meeting with the Christ described in Chapter 4 of The New Experience of the Supersensible, combines in one event two aspects of human reality that are separated from each other in ordinary consciousness: the usually unconscious reality of the spiritual world and the experience of awakened self-consciousness. Supersensible self-consciousness is the new self-situation and self-reality constituted in this experience. That is, in this meeting, an objective supersensible reality is experienced as the formative force of human self-consciousness that, until now, was capable of individualizing itself in the physical world alone. Therefore, this meeting can become, by means of the spiritual- scientific method, an object of an independent, ongoing development and conscious spiritual research. We can conceive the essence of this meeting as an initiation process in the following way.

In the perceived world a Being appears—the only one of its kind in our world—through whose etheric appearance process the totality of the Idea, the divine archetype of man, can be directly experienced. Man, who participated actively in this world-forming process, knows this form of the Idea to be his own human-cosmic Self. What otherwise is possible only in the sphere of intuitive thinking—the self-transforming self-meeting through self-perception, in the self-realization process of the simultaneous inner creation and perceiving of pure ideas—is experienced here in an objective-supersensible way, in the consciousness soul's self-conscious participation in Christ's etheric appearance. This means that through self-conscious imaginative perception man sees and experiences in this initiatory meeting his own ideal spirit, being and becoming as it comes to meet him from without. In this naturally given initiation, man receives his deepest inwardness as it flows towards him from the objective reaches of the world periphery; his truest and most intimate Self comes to meet him from the farthest, infinite horizon of his world existence, in and through the cosmic-human being of the etheric Christ.

This event can become the greatest possible call for free development of the inner spiritual activity of the consciousness soul, because man learns in the experience to recognize himself ever more in his true nature. The profoundest impulses of will and knowledge are ignited, spurring him to ever-deepening self-knowledge, because he realizes that this meeting is in truth the beginning of an infinite meeting, revealing the heights and depths of the forming process of human nature from the remotest past to the farthest future.

From an anthroposophical, spiritual-scientific point of view, every experience, be it sensible or supersensible, is a given and therefore, as such, an external fact. So long as it is not thoroughly penetrated and transformed by the active and independent cognitive thinking and imagining forces of the consciousness soul, it remains a personal, subjective event that, notwithstanding its personal value, cannot become in this form a matter of scientific study. For spiritual science, therefore, such an experience must first become an object of anthroposophical research. This means that a mutual relation must be established between the spiritual-scientific activity and the Christ experience it investigates. This constitutes the life-question and task of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming. On the one hand, it has to ever again re-present and so re-member this experience in reflective and discursive thinking. That is, it has to despiritualize it in order to bring it down to ordinary consciousness. On the other hand, it has to use the inner forces of this experience in order to continually spiritualize the spiritual-scientific activity and so transform it into a fully modern and living path of anthroposophical initiation. The weaving together of the opposite, mutually complementary and enhancing movements of the despiritualizing of the modern Christ experience and the spiritualizing of spiritual scientific activity is the centre of the Michael-Christ event of the present Michael age in the beginning of the new cosmic age of light.

 It is, therefore, the nature of the unique spiritual situation of the human soul itself at the threshold of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that determines not only the content of the present book but, above all, its form. The nature of the common Christ experiences consists in the personal salvation of the single human soul. Such an event is a fully justified end in and for itself. As was mentioned above, Rudolf Steiner characterized this experience also as a natural initiation through which man will have a direct knowledge of what until today only the initiate knew. But from the anthroposophical point of view this natural initiation fact can have a further significance, namely, by becoming a starting point for anthroposophical initiation science. This requires the development of a suitable method, the aim of which will be to transform the naturally given initiation experience into a fully individualized spiritual-scientific experience and knowledge.

 Now the question concerning our method must naturally arise: how is this mutual reversal to be carried through? Conceptually expressed, the answer is: we must transform the highest intensity of thought and knowledge experienced in the practice of The Philosophy of Freedom into the form of a living inner archetype of this method. What is freely created in the intuitive act of knowledge as the process of self-realization of man's true Spirit Self can become a living, knowledge-creating organ, through which the two opposite spirit movements can reverse each other in—and into—each other interchangeably. The creative activity of pure thinking spiritualizes the spiritual-scientific knowledge-process and condenses the naturally given imaginative perception and thus brings about a mutually transforming perception and knowledge of the supersensible through thinking and thinking through the supersensible. It weaves dynamically the doubled, two-way etheric bridge of consciousness's continuation and remembrance over the abyss of spirit forgetfulness, in the darkness of which the living spirit reality of our age is obscured and forgotten by humanity.

Pictorially expressed, the answer to the question of method is: the given appearances of Anthroposophy and the Etheric Christ are transformed by means of the crossing and the mutual penetration of the two appearances by means of the growing knowledge of the essence of the other. The goal is to achieve a systematically increased intensification and acceleration of the rhythmic sway between the poles of their given appearances, so that an active and cognitive spiritual heart organ is formed through their mutually reversed breathing movement. In this dynamically cognizing heart organ their enhanced life in each other reveals, through its inner conscious pulsation, the secret of their being and becoming in man: the living Christ in and through the Being of Anthroposophia, and the living Being of Anthroposophia in and through the Christ. Behind both appearances we have to unveil the veiled secret: the reality of world-man in the man-created, Christ-permeated world-man as the Christ-permeated, consciousness soul's child of Anthrorpos- Sophia, bearing and nourishing the future earthly-human Sun in his heart.10

As was indicated above, this method already exists. In its earliest form, it was first developed by St Paul from his Christ experience at the gates of Damascus. And it was brought to its greatest perfection for the age of the consciousness soul in the anthroposophical spiritual-scientific research of Rudolf Steiner. We shall bring before us now the origin and essence of the 'Pauline method' as described by Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical investigations...

The New Experience of the Supersensible

The Anthroposophical Knowledge Drama of Our Time